Fetzie wrote:"Judgement of Wisdom: Judging an enemy target generates 1 holy power and grants you a buff, 10 second duration, that restores 4% mana per second" in addition to a slightly buffed GbtL.

Would avoid the whole "infinite mana so go cast FoL for 300k on everybody during downtime" while not actively fighting something, while letting us never go OOM when tanking or waiting to taunt.

Something like that would work for sure, just seems to me that as the SoI nerf wasn't aimed at prot the simplest fix is to just revert the change for prot, our mana return is nicely balanced atm so why fool around with it?/shrug

Daishan"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." -- Terry Pratchett

Treck wrote:People are really going all up in arms cause their items doesnt have 100% perfect stat allocation

Every expansion, same shit. "My gear isn't optimal, it has crit on it and I want haste!" And then you end up with better itemized/optimized gear in the last raid tier than in the first... and people still complain! Savages in this town.

to be fair, i expect the BiS gear of the final tier of a expansion to be itemized perfectly. if not that gear, what gear then? not like it creates much of a balancing issue because if you have BiS gear you cleared everything. would just be a nice way by blizzard to say "good job, now enjoy your perfectly itemized gear till the next xpac hits"

Treck wrote:People are really going all up in arms cause their items doesnt have 100% perfect stat allocation

Every expansion, same shit. "My gear isn't optimal, it has crit on it and I want haste!" And then you end up with better itemized/optimized gear in the last raid tier than in the first... and people still complain! Savages in this town.

We complain because the goalposts keep shifting. They implemented active mitigation for Paladins in such a way as to make haste stacking the most favourable way to go. That was our target so we got rid of our avoidance gear and went down the haste trail. Now they want avoidance gear to be attractive to us to the extent that they take away a part of our active HP generation and put it on passive abilities - contrary to the philosophy of active mitigation.

We're not upset because they don't give us 100% perfect stat allocation on our gear. That's a straw man argument, which is cheap and dismissive of the issue. What's "our gear" anyway - we can always get "someone else's gear" if it's better itemised for us. How many of us ran around Firelands with 2pc Prot and 2pc Ret tier gear because that combo was more fun?

Did you calculate what effect this change has on you? If you were gearing for 50% haste, then that 50% haste would net you 1 SotR every 4 minutes less post 5.4. You're likely not at 50% haste yet, so it's more like 1 SotR every 5 or 6 minutes. Do you really think we should change our entire gearset, because it gives us 1 SotR less every 5-6 minutes? (And that's assuming we don't waste less GC procs than before. It is very likely we will waste less GC procs, which would make Haste post 5.4 practically on par with current haste.)

The Haste on your gear is NOT being nerfed. The Avoidance on your gear is being buffed slightly. It's only for the better. Haste will still be better than avoidance, but those tier pieces, cloak, or off-pieces that are handed to you are now a little more useful.

And how is it passive, really? We used to get GC procs on our CS strikes, which we were doing already. Now we're getting GC procs on avoidance, which will occur randomly. If at all, the new method is slightly more engaging, as we can get the GC procs at random times. We still have to actively press AS to use the GC proc, and then actively press SotR to use the HoPo we gained from that. That's quite far from passive mitigation, if you ask me.

If only people could stop thinking like the sky is coming down, and start realizing these changes are actually quite good.

Thels wrote:And how is it passive, really? We used to get GC procs on our CS strikes, which we were doing already. Now we're getting GC procs on avoidance, which will occur randomly. If at all, the new method is slightly more engaging, as we can get the GC procs at random times. We still have to actively press AS to use the GC proc, and then actively press SotR to use the HoPo we gained from that. That's quite far from passive mitigation, if you ask me.

If we maintain a proper rotation, we're rewarded with more GC procs than if we don't, currently. After 5.4, there's nothing we can do to earn GC procs. They happen passively. Can't you see how that is passive instead of active?

If only people could stop thinking like the sky is coming down, and start realizing these changes are actually quite good.

Again a straw man. I generally detest logical fallacies, but when you pretend the opposition is getting all emotional about something just because we don't like it, it's particularly annoying and it's really a cheap tactic. The sky isn't falling, and no one here is suggesting it is.

We are just getting a nerf, regardless of how small you make it out to be, but I don't like us getting a nerf of any kind. Not while there are Monks out there doing far more DPS with seemingly endless threat and the ability to gen snap aggro on groups even at range. When do we get to see those things instead of nerfs?

Koatanga wrote:If we maintain a proper rotation, we're rewarded with more GC procs than if we don't, currently. After 5.4, there's nothing we can do to earn GC procs. They happen passively. Can't you see how that is passive instead of active?

Except that we're not maintaining our proper rotation to earn GC procs. We maintain our proper rotation because those abilities themselves generate HoPo. So now we get GC procs from avoidance rather than from the rotation we were already generating. That really doesn't change anything.

Koatanga wrote:Again a straw man. I generally detest logical fallacies, but when you pretend the opposition is getting all emotional about something just because we don't like it, it's particularly annoying and it's really a cheap tactic. The sky isn't falling, and no one here is suggesting it is.

We are just getting a nerf, regardless of how small you make it out to be, but I don't like us getting a nerf of any kind. Not while there are Monks out there doing far more DPS with seemingly endless threat and the ability to gen snap aggro on groups even at range. When do we get to see those things instead of nerfs?

A straw man, how? I actually bothered to calculate what the effect would be, rather than screaming "Haste is going to give less HoPo now, Blizzard hates us!".

Also, it might not even be a nerf to our gain from haste. Haste itself might cause less GC procs, but it still gives more filler room to use the GC procs that we gain from avoidance, preventing us from wasting procs.

Also, even if it is a nerf to haste, it's still not a nerf to our overall class.

Also, Monks are getting nerfed.

Users: We don't like all this avoidance.Blizzard: We'll make all that avoidance that you have a little more useful.Users: Why do you hate us, Blizzard?

Thels wrote:Thels: We don't like all this avoidance.Blizzard: We'll make all that avoidance that you have a little more useful, but we're going to take it away from somewhere else and make the net result a loss in DPS particularly when you are not the targeted tank.Thels: Oh thank you, kind and benevolent overlords for we like buffs to stats we purposefully avoid while getting nerfs to our DPS, because DPS is never important in beating enrage timers! Thank you so much!

Thels wrote:Thels: We don't like all this avoidance.Blizzard: We'll make all that avoidance that you have a little more useful, but we're going to take it away from somewhere else and make the net result a loss in DPS particularly when you are not the targeted tank.Thels: Oh thank you, kind and benevolent overlords for we like buffs to stats we purposefully avoid while getting nerfs to our DPS, because DPS is never important in beating enrage timers! Thank you so much!

Fixed.

Wait, what was that about strawmen just 5 posts ago?

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

This definitely qualifies as sky-is-falling crap. They do not keep shifting the underlying concept. They initially wanted us to have some sort of (weak) haste scaling with encounter buffs (Sinestra, Primordius, Heroism/Bloodlust), but still intended for us to use primarily tank gear. However, they overshot the mark a bit, probably because they focused more on DTPS as a metric than smoothness. In their defense, nobody realized the smoothness value of haste until after MoP went live.

And despite the fact that the haste gearing paradigm took them by surprise, they've been very accepting of it. Keep in mind that they could have killed it at any point by turning off Sanctity of Battle for prot. What they've done is instead try to straddle the line - support the haste strategy while also trying to keep the traditional "tank" gear that we were intended to use from being useless.

The rest of your complaints are just whining. Mitigation has active and passive parts, and even haste has a hefty chunk of passive survivability from SoI and SS. Resource generation was tweaked because of a Holy consideration, and I think it's a stretch to claim that SoI mana returns are "active" in the first place. Tank DPS isn't that important as long as the five tank specs produce relatively similar amounts of it, which is why Warriors and DKs get Riposte and we don't. That doesn't mean they can ignore tank DPS for balancing.

In short, it seems like you're trying to find things to complain about. That's now how we roll in AT&C. Numbers or GTFO.

We need to be a lot more precise than this, because the GC change is a nerf to haste (just not necessarily a radical enough one to change anything about gearing strategy).

The current implementation of GC has the ability to proc from an event (CS, HotR) whose cooldown is decreased by haste via Sanctity of Battle. Removing that effect is is a net reduction in the marginal rate of increased resource-generation due to haste.

This definitely qualifies as sky-is-falling crap. They do not keep shifting the underlying concept. They initially wanted us to have some sort of (weak) haste scaling with encounter buffs (Sinestra, Primordius, Heroism/Bloodlust), but still intended for us to use primarily tank gear. However, they overshot the mark a bit, probably because they focused more on DTPS as a metric than smoothness. In their defense, nobody realized the smoothness value of haste until after MoP went live.

No, it's not "sky is falling". It's annoyance, not "I'm quitting tanking over this", which would be "sky is falling. Annoyance is "damnit, I just DE's that stupid dodge trinket to make more room, now I have to go back and get it for the Tortos fight".

As far as tank DPS goes, as long as there are high-DPS tanks, other tanks will seek to maximise their DPS to keep up. Once survivability is reached, the gearing goes to additional damage. For my raid, it matters if Sul dies before he becomes empowered, or if the bats die before the next lot come out. We don't have world-class DPS, so we often hit enrage timers where they exist, or are so close than an extra bit of DPS would make the difference. So tank DPS does matter.

As long as tank DPS matters, tanks will gear for it, and Bliz will design encounters knowing that tanks will be gearing for DPS. If our overall DPS is reduced because we now generate no procs when not taking melee attacks, then we run into the problem where our DPS is assumed but doesn't in fact exist.

Do I have specific numbers for that? No I don't. It is, however, intuitively obvious that we generate 0 procs when not taking avoidable melee hits, and therefore generate no additional AS or SotR. Is it small? Yes it is. Would it make the difference on a 1% wipe? It possibly could.

Take an encounter like Garalon. How many GC procs could we expect in that fight? My napkin math says 0, unless we keep some trash on us to generate them. I do concede that the enrage timer on that one has been vastly extended, and that it's previous tier. But the fact remains that there have been and will be bosses who do not melee us.

We need to be a lot more precise than this, because the GC change is a nerf to haste (just not necessarily a radical enough one to change anything about gearing strategy).

The current implementation of GC has the ability to proc from an event (CS, HotR) whose cooldown is decreased by haste via Sanctity of Battle. Removing that effect is is a net reduction in the marginal rate of increased resource-generation due to haste.

That is plainly a nerf.

You'll get less GC procs from haste, that is true. (To be exact, right now, going from 0% to 50% haste will net you 1 additional GC proc every 75 seconds, so 1 additional SotR ever 225 seconds, assuming there's no wasted overlap. At lower haste numbers, this will obviously a longer duration per additional proc/SotR.)

However, considering that we had a 12/12 proc chance, and will move to a 0/30 proc chance, there will be overlapping GC procs for either scenarios. Someone with a lot of haste will stand a decent chance using each GC proc in it's own filler, while someone with absolutely zero haste will have more overlapping GC procs.

Koatanga wrote:Do I have specific numbers for that? No I don't. It is, however, intuitively obvious that we generate 0 procs when not taking avoidable melee hits, and therefore generate no additional AS or SotR. Is it small? Yes it is. Would it make the difference on a 1% wipe? It possibly could.

Take an encounter like Garalon. How many GC procs could we expect in that fight? My napkin math says 0, unless we keep some trash on us to generate them. I do concede that the enrage timer on that one has been vastly extended, and that it's previous tier. But the fact remains that there have been and will be bosses who do not melee us.

You will generate 0 procs while not taking melee hits, but you might generate more while you are taking melee hits. And your DPS is generally much higher while being attacked due to Vengeance. I'm not saying it isn't a small DPS nerf - it very well might be. But it's so small as to be fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Pretty much every other class tweak in the patch notes has a larger chance of making a difference on a 1% wipe than this one does.

In addition, unless I'm mistaken or misremembering, Garalon's Furious Swipe can be dodged and parried.

I have a feeling they'll start having avoidance grant some resources as well as having stuff like haste effects boost it too. It's a bit easier to balance two stats that grant similar gains than two stats where one simply doesn't, plus it makes both feel more like they're contributing to the active tanking model. Notice how DKs will have avoids working for Scent of Blood, which means more RP and thus more ability use. Warriors currently have avoids reset the CD on Revenge, which typically means more rage for them and of course more ability use. Heck, once upon a time paladins got mana from blocks and dodges, but Blizz eventually figured out that mana tends to suck as a resource for melee and thus we got Holy Power in Cata.

My issue, and I still intend to post on official forums (I'm so busy lately ), is that mathematically mono-a-mono with a consistently meleeing T16 boss, sure, this doesn't provide a huge nerf or buff, its relatively unchanged in terms of GC procs etc, and add another mob or 2 on you and the new GC sees more benefit than the old. The issue lies in the realistic raiding situation that we deal with, where simulations and math help indeed, but don't provide a varying boss list even between separate pulls on the same boss.Most bosses aren't 1 tanked, and don't just sit there meleeing you for 10 minutes with some special skill that is also avoidable. Any situation that isn't that, will start to see suffering from the new GC model, and believe me, there are a handful of them, even in this tier alone. Horridon puncture, Durumu gaze, etc. I'm beginning to compile a realistic list of how this GC change will play out on a boss by boss basis in T16, and it isn't all that pretty (usual disclaimer, things change, numbers are tuned, it's PTR, etc etc). But there's already an overwhelming number of bosses/situations where (for example):- There's tank swaps (duh)- There's untanked phases (eg Immerseus P2)- There's cast timers during normal meleeing time that interrupt auto-swing for the boss- There's heavy magic damage only (god forbid another Lei Shi scenario)- Unavoidable special attacks

And the list can go on. These situations of course affect HPG, leading to less HPF (holy power finishers). Now you can ask, "well why do you need to spam SotR when you're off-tanking and there's nothing to do Sloot aside for DPS? Paladins have enough of that already!" There's a few things here. First, you oftentimes do have something to do where that extra HPG will help (for example, Iron Juggernaut P2 where tanks can soak mines, would be very nice to have that extra HP once in a while for SotR for soaking, and nothing is attacking you for a minute), not to mention, with proper Vengeance tank rotations I find myself bombing the raid with WoG fairly often during progression if I can spare the HP, which you obviously can when you're off tanking given the situation. These are just a couple of examples.

My beef with Blizzard doesn't lie in the change necessarily, but rather with their approach and comments on it. When they say they have no intention of nerfing Paladins or our love of Haste (insert Blue Post here) as their response to this change, it doesn't make sense. Because overall it is a nerf to us as a whole, and hits Haste harder than others, in most situations. Either just call a spade a spade and say "yeah we do want to nerf you a bit" or stick to your true intentions, and find another benefit to make dodge/parry more attractive without touching GC (did I hear someone say Reckoning? <3).

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware on certain encounters than can be a handsome buff (Spoils of Pandaria), but in the grand scheme of T16, so far, it's not. </sloot rant>

If I'm reading things correct, most (if not all) of you are sticking with the control / haste build as soon as 5.4 hits live, even if GC stays in it's current form and mana will not be an issue, right?

As I've always been curious playing specs and playstyles that differ from the usual, I thinkI'd give control / avoid a try. What would one's stat priority and gemming / reforge be like?

Stamina is always a good choice for survivability, probably the best if you are still gearing up. It of course depends on content. Naturally, in 25HC that extra stamina would be more useful than in LFR.

Hit and Expertise capping are also good options.

After that, it actually becomes a bit of a wash. Yes, if you play the class right Haste is stronger than Dodge and Parry, but it's not like you can't survive with Dodge and Parry instead of Haste.

Will you be fine with Dodge/Parry instead of Haste? Yes. Is it the smartest thing to do? No, as your survivability and DPS will both drop.

Though truth be told, your gemming strategy doesn't reflect your stat priority at all. If you prioritize Dodge over Mastery, why would you ever use Mastery gems?

The question I have to myself (and the main reason I was posting mixed mastery gems) is: what is "enough" stamina to aim for.I know that this approach will result in more spiky damage income, so I was wondering how much life I would need to compensate.I figured that with the gear to come, hitting the 1 Million HP mark will not be that big of a problem in raid situations, andthat it should be enough to compensate for the more damage income? After this, gemming mixed stamina would be less attractiveto me and therefore I came up with the parry / mastery gems instead. Again, this is nothing but speculating. I don't really likegemming pure dodge or mixed dodge, I remember dodge DR starting at very low numbers making it less attractive early, especially becauseI will get lots of it by using tank itemized items that I normally would not use. It may totally be possible that my estimated stat priority will change depending on gear, and at a certain point mastery willbe better than dodge because of dodge DR, resulting in stamina > hit > exp > parry > mastery > dodge > haste.That's why I'm asking, I can be totally wrong because I never tried this for nearly 2 years now. I suck at tank theorycrafting anyway.

You're forgetting that we have a truckload of Strength on our gear, and that Strength provides quite a lot of Parry. So while Parry DR is more lenient than Dodge DR, you might still be better off with some Dodge gems.

So, after enough thinking I conclude that your gemming strategy sounds way better than mine.I'll try and test it out as soon as 5.4 hits. In the meantime, I was wondering which meleeattacks trigger the healing effect from "Seal of Insight". I'm sure autoattacks do, butdoes CS / SotR / or even Judgment / AS trigger it as well?